Lib-Dem MPis award-winner

PAUL Tyler, MP for North Corwall and former Lib-Dem agriculture spokesman, has been named country parliamentarian of the year in the Country Life magazine awards.

"If this attracts attention to the causes I hold dear, not least the plight of farmers whose businesses have been decimated both by BSE and by the policy of the former government, then I am delighted," Mr Tyler said.

"As government and Parliament are now predominantly urban in outlook, we who represent the countryside have to speak up and make ourselves heard," he added.